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Why This Man Cries at Videos of Strangers — with Jesson Mata · The soulnotskin Podcast with Jen SluMac

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was of a man who had an alcohol problem.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: He was in an ambulance, and the tech is just talking to him, and the tech literally just asking questions to keep him alive.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Oh, why do you do that?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's bad for your liver.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I don't know.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then in that conversation, he said, Today's my daughter's birthday.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, I'm even tearing up thinking about it because he was like saying, Today's my daughter's birthday.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: She died um at Hurricane Katrina, 12 years old.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he just in his memory, and it's totally just drunk, but his memory was super intact.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he was talking about her.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like crying the entire time, like uh, like pouring crying.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Soul Knot Skin Podcast, a virtual living room, a safe, welcoming place to land where you can pull up a chair and share stories straight from the heart.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Jen Slumack, or as my students like to call me, Miss Jen.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about the real human experience, the hard stuff, the wonderful stuff, and the messy everyday growth that shapes who we become.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Real stories, real people, real insight, becoming who we are.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Settle in and let's dive into today's episode.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, and welcome to the Soul Not Skin Podcast.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, today, you know, some people they scroll past beauty, some scroll past grief, but Jess and Mata let's both stop him.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Online he's become known for reacting openly and often tearfully to moments of love, loss, courage, kindness, and heartbreak.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I find that fascinating because in a culture that still teaches men to harden themselves, hide what hurts, and perform this idea of strength, he's offering a different image.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And he's offering an image of a man that's willing to be moved.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: This conversation's about more than that, though.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's about what we learn to suppress, what happens when vulnerability becomes visible, and why witnessing somebody else's humanity can sometimes reconnect us to our own.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Today I'm talking to Jess and Mata about his journey to masculinity, tenderness, grief, beauty, and the courage to let himself openly feel what's actually there.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: I saw a video of you uh with healthcare workers in the background scrambling, running all night long, you know, up, and and and you had tears.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, who is this guy?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: And um you and I both know how long it took for us to get this together, but the audience doesn't know.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like you to tell us, Justin, who are you and what what is what brought the boy to the man that you are today?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Jen, first, thank you for that introduction.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: That was actually quite beautiful, and it summarizes my sentiments about you know masculinity and crying.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, though, when I go scrolling, I think people talk too much.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I talk too much, in fact.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm always talking, complaining about injustice, and just words coming out of my mouth like diarrhea.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided that instead of talking, I would express my sentiments uh with injustice or like shining a light on an issue by just reacting to it emotionally.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, tears have always been the four kind of expression of what's inside my soul.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because whenever I cry, I typically let it out.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Privately, though.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I decided that, you know what, if I can do it in private, then maybe I can express it in public to show people that these emotions welling up in me are actually valuable because they say a lot about me as a human being.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: But also I think it encourages other people to also cry and empathize because they see someone reacting emotionally to a video.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many videos out there, Jen.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, I do scroll all the time.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I find myself at two o'clock in the morning after scrolling for hours, noticing that I've been scrolling for three, four hours, and I am like emotionally riled up because the algorithm typically forces you to look at things that are so explosive in emotion that you at the end of it are like, oh my God, what am I gonna do?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then you get angry and you wake up in the morning more anxious than ever.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I decided that, you know, I would just cry.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so that video that you saw was, yeah, it was um in a hospital, and my sister's a nurse, and she works 12-hour shifts.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: So when I saw that, I instantly, I mean, I teared up because of my sister, but also because my mom um had cancer, a double mastectomy, uh breast cancer.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: She also had a brain tumor, so I know what a hospital looks like.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I see nurses literally reacting and like, you know, responding to emergencies, I just thought of my mom and my sister.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the first thing that came out of my eyes were tears, and I wanted to show that.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that was uh the beginning of my journey is that that video.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I felt proud of it because I was able to show emotions publicly versus just privately.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I love that, and thank you for the story and the in the uh bringing us to what your sister does and your mom's experience.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I too no hospitals.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: I've lost several people to cancer, the most recent uh being my mother.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I I feel for you.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I just really appreciate it.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And as you said, in a in a world of explosive reels, uh, I just I appreciated seeing something tender, you know.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, it's almost like uh the algorithm does it it sort of forces you to look at these explosive things and pardon me, um it's almost though, like you know, it's uh it's a performance on these explosive uh things.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then I saw yours and it was almost it, it it could have been a performance also, except except that I thought, but this is a performance for sincerity.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is if this this is uh somebody willing to share, you know, this uh part that nobody, but much less men, tend to share publicly.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And um, there was something just captivating about that.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: So interestingly enough, Jen, when you uh said performative, I actually thought about that too.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is like one of the considerations that I had was in expressing my feelings publicly and outwardly, is it gonna look like performance?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so a few people messaged me actually, one that I'm speaking to regularly and said, Hey, I'm just wondering, are are these real tears?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because I really wanted to know.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I told them, yeah, I I start the video when I start to well up in my tears, and then I video that and capture that moment as authentically as possible.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't redo a video.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: If I don't cry at it, or I cry initially and I don't cry anymore, I don't film.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: I only cry at videos that really touch me.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um, this person that asked that was actually asking because she was moved by the videos and she started looking at the videos, the series, and just started crying, and she couldn't find out, she couldn't figure out why she was crying at videos that maybe were topical.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then we decided that, you know, we would become internet friends and talk about uh our feelings and what things we've gone through.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of the effect of it is like I'm connecting with people because I'm connecting with my own feelings.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think to a large extent, they're very, very genuine.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there might be a few moments you're like, oh, I have to post a video now, what am I gonna do?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't do that.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: I only post when I see something that I I have a reaction to.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you might see me post 10 videos in a day or none at all.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's because if I don't have an emotional connection to it, then I don't do it.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I love that.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's so great, man, that you've you've got friends now that you actually can offline sort of.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: You including.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think it's wonderful though, right?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's this whole thing, we don't have to go down this rabbit hole, but there is a thing called mirror neurons.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and and it's part of why we thrive in relationship because we we sort of we need that connection to fully experience ourselves, and we can often uh perceive somebody else's emotional state, and we'll find ourselves.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's think about babies that are like hardly trained in life yet, and the parent or the caregiver makes faces and they respond to it, you know what I mean?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it's really important what we're putting out in the world because people will respond to it.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: And what are we drawing out of them, right?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Are we drawing out their anger or are we drawing out their compassion, their empathy?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: And um and that takes a real uh, I think a real self-awareness.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it's also risky though, Jen, because um out there people will come at you, and the algorithm, the most successful algorithmic like responses have always been about anger.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: The more angry you are, the more clicks you'll have, and the more attention you get.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of people, when they make videos, there are two videos that I see: either anguish or like something really moving, like you know, helping somebody out.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: So there are these polar extremes of us, of like anguish will get us to move, injustice maybe, or just angry at a Karen.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other side is, oh, look, compassion, right?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: So polar opposites, and I prefer to take the other side because it's healthier for me.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I get angry too much, and I do get angry a lot, and there's an issue currently that I'm really angry at, but I get angry at, you know, injustice.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not perfect, last person to be declare perfection, but I like to think that human beings are more capable than what we put out there, and you know, wrathful anger or like, you know, responding to people in such a negative way.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's important for us to feel all those emotions, but I prefer to feel kind of the, you know, empathy and the sympathy and things that I think contribute to one's own betterment.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I, quite frankly, I'm unhealthy when I'm angry all the time.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm anxious, I'm I don't perform well among my friends or my um colleagues because I'm constantly, constantly riled up about an issue and angry.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: I would rather be sad about someone's death or crying about love that was so endearing, and wake up in the morning going, oh yeah, that was beautiful, rather than, oh my god, I want to kill someone, you know?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I do know.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's such an important choice for each of us to make.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's this, I don't know if you've ever seen it, but there's a, and forgive me if I say this wrong, but there's a Cherokee Indian poem, I believe, of a grandfather and his grandson, and it's called The Two Wolves.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the young man, I may butcher it, but the young man uh is sitting on a log at by a fire with grandpa, and grandpa's talking to him about uh an explosion of anger that the young man had.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so they're they're having this conversation, and grandpa says, you know, there's two wolves that live inside of every human being.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: One is uh patience and kindness and compassion and love, and um one is anger and greed and jealousy and rage, and they're fighting, they're at each other's throats constantly.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the little guy is looking at grandpa and he says, Well, which one wins?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the grandpa looked at him and he said, It's the one that you feed.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh, that's profound.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: I yeah, I love that.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: And again, forgive me if I sourced that wrong, I say, to the universe, because it's one of the most powerful stories that I've heard and I share with my men uh that I teach inside the county jail.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because we we have a choice, even though it doesn't feel like it, particularly in a world that bombards us with uh with, like you said, like algorithms of anger and algorithms of um, you know, focus on things that we may not otherwise choose to, you know, let into our day, um, because it all has to do with mental health, not just the one that you feed in terms of uh what you're eating and putting inside your body, but what are you listening to?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: What are you watching?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: What are you consuming in always?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, being mindful of that and and trying to make a choice.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: I tell my son, listen, there's two teams of this world, and they're always it's kind of the two wolves thing.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you got to pick which one you want to live on, right?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's always gonna be the controversy and the anger and all those things, and we all visit it sometimes, but I want to be useful, man.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be useful, I want to be tender, and it's hard to say those things in this world, but we can choose to try each day, and that's what I'm saying.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's important, that's really important, the duality too in our humanity of the spirit and the body, because I deal with dualities all the time with masculine India and feminine India, but specifically now I want to talk about looks because I'm a personal trainer.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: One of my trades is personal training, and I focus on the externals, but part of my training is the internal part, is like, how do you feel about yourself and why are you doing this in the first place?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's really important to acknowledge that duality.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: I even like agree with you with the feeding which one's gonna win.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think that duality is necessary of one anger and one of the other, because you don't know love unless you know hate.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you can't know love unless you see the polar opposite, right?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm okay with being angry at an injustice or seeing that I love Karen videos, by the way, and justice that comes with karma.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: I love seeing that because when I see that, I can understand in a deeper level what the other side is.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have not, which is interesting because I thought I would get a lot of comments like, who is that fruitcake?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, crying.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: In the thousands of comments that I've seen, I've only seen one that said that.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, That's me.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm that fruitcake.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: But only one of thousands, right?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm like, oh, okay, it's not as bad as I think it is, because I thought I was gonna get a major, you know, a backlash.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: But people really appreciate the fact that, you know, here's a a man, a more feminine man, because I also deal with the masculine feminine.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: When I realized that there's strength in being effeminate because women are effeminate.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if I own that power that women with their emotions, and I do believe women have a greater depth of emotional cognizance than men, that's my bias.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm gonna own that and I'm gonna take it on myself and be like, I can be masculine in the gym, but I can also be feminine while reacting to those things in the sense of like crying.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not gonna be sexist and say that crying is a feminine train.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I feel like people have associated that with women as a weakness, but I'm like, that is a strength.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Crying, because you have that deep awareness of sense of self and also your feelings, that is a powerful strength.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I would rather have that than, you know, keep it in.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, all of that.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, sir.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um I you said so much.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I told you diarrhea of the mouth, right?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have a single complaint about it, man.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: This is exactly why we're doing this, and I appreciate it.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I also feel like uh in whatever circumstance, if you don't like me or you don't care for me, let me know because then I know.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I also appreciate that there's a recognition that we all live in this country, regardless of our thoughts, our beliefs, our religions, our voting, uh, we all have a right to be here.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: We all have a right to our opinions, we all have a right to uh feel what we feel.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how anybody got to be who they are, uh, but I guarantee you that every everybody with an opinion or a thought or a feeling about something or someone uh developed that through experience, one way or another.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it was uh witnessing somebody that they loved in their life uh feel that way, or whether it was, you know, personal uh one-on-one contact with another person that sort of whatever it was, I don't know your story.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm just gonna respect that you do, and I'm gonna ask that you don't harm me, right?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's the bottom line.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Bottom line.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's in the framers of the constitution thought exactly like you.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we have all the these like experiences, and we have to protect it.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like protect that expression, one caveat, you can't incite violence toward that person.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, a caveat that we understand.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, no, no, no, no, it's good, and I think that's absolutely true.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think that uh the danger of uh social society today, living on the internet as we do with algorithms, is that we tend to be in an echo chamber.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so before we get too far down, Matt, I want to do that.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, please bring us back, bring us back.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um the male-female piece that you said, I think that it's really exciting uh how you say that you sort of uh experience both the masculine and the feminine because I am sort of of the opinion, uh having identified, you know, I'm um I'm a woman who's always been a tomboy, but I love being a woman, right?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm somebody who has dated men, but I'm married to a woman.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I've had that what yeah, so I've had I know, shocking.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I've had this like sort of with yeah, well, and that's the beauty of it, right?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Is it's become a bit safer for us to move through the world as we are without having to, you know, be what people think I am, right?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, anyway, my point being that I tend to think through my life experience that the male and the female that are supposed to be united is honestly the idea is that we all possess male and female characteristics, uh, characteristics of the effeminate and characteristics of the masculine.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the beauty of a balanced human being is the ability to embrace both and and and be okay with themselves in both, because we are socialized.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: The evolution of how we have been socialized, you know, it changes sometimes what a man can do, what a woman can do, what a man can be, what a race can be, all of that stuff is sort of fluid, though it stays kind of grounded in crap.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, but there is fluidity to it, and I believe that some of the healthiest humans are also fluid in their understanding of their internal selves.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so, as goofy as that might sound to somebody, and as woo-woo as that might soon, I assure you that my survival through addiction and identity and faith all have depended on me coming to terms with that, you know.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, in terms of process your stuff, right?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Since you, Jen, since you came out, I'm gonna come out, obviously gay here, but I also I've declared myself non-binary for that very issue of a respect towards both, you know, expressions of the human person, but also not strictly identifying with one at the expense of the other.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because the moment I realized um that I was being trained in a very, very unilateral way to think of myself just as masculine, and that was the highest form of expression, the day when I realized that it was a commentary against women and calling the feminist side of me weak and that expression weak, I decided I'm gonna stand up for my sisters, my mother, because those are the women that are more powerful by spades than I can ever be.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: If I had a minute sense of what my mom has in her heart, I would be the most amazing person in the world, right?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so women have always been like at the forefront of what I conceive as the most beautiful traits.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, women, again, I won't, I'll be sexist for a second.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Women are nurturers naturally, not because they bear children, but just because I think they're just naturally nurturers.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And also women have a greater sense of empathy and a greater sense of worldview that's total rather than singular.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Men, we do, we've been trained this way.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: We are singular beings.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: We focus on the one while women focus on the many.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And when one day I decided, you know what, that is a strength, then I'm gonna take on those effeminate traits and be proud of it.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I stopped pretending to be straight, that is masculine butch, because my natural tendency is this to be effeminate, to be a little soft.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not gonna hide it anymore.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like women are such beautiful beings and I want to be like them.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I I think that's I didn't know that you were gay either.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really interesting how you see the person falling out of my mouth.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: No, you're so silly.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: You're so funny.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: No, but I mean, honestly, like you don't, because you have that, you know, you are very masculine externally, and like you don't know, you don't know anymore.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, some of my most effeminate male friends are married.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: And they're not necessarily in the closet, they're just married and happy.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that it exists.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And when we stop having these like two-dimensional caricatures of each other, be it uh be it MAGA or progressive, be it black or white, gay or straight, bi.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, then we can start to see each other.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I do Soul Knot Skin podcasts, is I want people who never walked in my shoes or my guests' shoes and may not or may not ever meet some of the folks that I bring on the show, might be in their car listening to the show and be like, oh my God, I totally I do that too.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we can maybe start to see uh our common humanity rather than all of the distinctions uh that bear that generate the divisiveness, right?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um let me ask you a question.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: So let's go back for a minute.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, how did you get here?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I I've learned a bit about you in inviting you on the show, and you've had quite a journey uh of things that you've done, been, learned.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell us about that?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, see these rings in my eyes.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: This indicates how many years I've had on Earth, and you can determine my age based on how many rings I have right here in my eyes.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm 47, and so I have a great deal of life experience.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, I started out my philosophical studies and seminary.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: When I was 21, I actually volunteered for a year with Mother Teresa's sisters in Calcutta, India.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I was serving the poor in that capacity.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: So literally spent every day in the streets, um, helping people as much as possible.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Through them, I learned of my humanity that these people, individuals, they're untouchables.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: You could literally not touch them by law and also by edict of a religious, you know, old religious edict.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was there with as a Westerner, picking people up off the street and judging the culture.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Then I learned the depth of the culture and then realized that this is the mess of humanity, right?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not going to poo-poo any expression of it.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna try to understand it.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: So after that, I went to seminary and I spent uh uh six years in the seminary stu uh studying philosophy and theology, and that's where I got my formation, for better or worse, in my head, intellectual formation.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, you know, scholastic era, old church, and that was the foundation of my philosophical thinking.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then following that, when I left the seminary, I started to shape it more broadly.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of limiting myself to medieval philosophy, I started to look at it more broadly of human understanding and what the human person is.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've arrived at this point in philosophy, in my thinking of a little bit more total and holistic versus just kind of like specific.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so at this stage in my life, I am definitely a lot more open in my brain.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: But the reason that I have arrived here in your question is that I have experienced the very lowest form of human um suffering, not only through my own suffering, but through others, of death, of addiction, of many people in my life going through addiction and learning rather than judging people on the streets who have addiction, learning that, oh my God, I could be that person, just one little decision, and I could end up in the streets in the same state.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, why am I judging that person who's shooting up in the street?
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I looking down on that person who's struggling?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: When I'm like, that could be me.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it would help a little bit if I was a lot less judgmental and a lot more understanding.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like everyone suffers.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Human beings, by their very nature, suffer.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: The more one suffers, I think, the more deep we get into that emotion of like understanding what our real lot in life is.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then through that, you have compassion, you have empathy.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Then you can be like, oh yeah, I understand where that person's coming from.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now allow me to, you know, be more compassionate.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's why I'm also compassionate towards people of differing views.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's like they arrived there somehow, whatever that process, they arrived there, and likely through some suffering.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes our anguish comes from the fact that someone hurt us.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Someone hurt me physically, emotionally as a child.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I have learned from that.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I have grown to be more compassionate because I experienced that.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: But if I listen to that suffering and listen to that pain, I think we are more apt to be more compassionate if we understood that suffering.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think you do.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And when you said something about addiction, no?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: One of the greatest forms of suffering is addiction.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I had friends who are so like bodily addicted, like one little drop of alcohol could send them into a tirade.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: One drop, how does that happen?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're obviously disposed, predisposed to that suffering.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of me hammering down on them about why they decided to do that, why not support them and find them the resources as much as possible to assist them?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I love that.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: And um, wow, what a journey.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: And now my ministry is sort of this, and it's sort of like what access they had to different options when they needed to quell their pain or their suffering that we all experience.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that the guy on the street who's shooting up, um, you know, we get to the end of ourselves at some point in our suffering, some quicker than others, because resource is slimmer for some than it is for others.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't mean money and I don't mean uh treatment programs and uh I mean like, you know, can I call my mom and ask for her to co-sign alone so I can get an apartment?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, can I call my brother and feel safe enough to talk about how I'm hurting, to get the support that I need, to not do something stupid with my pain?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean resources in terms of human connection.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: And if we don't have the human connection, uh resources that we need, or uh other people who are close enough to us who have financial resources, who have access to things that we may need, without those resources, uh we've gotten to the end of ourselves more quickly than others, and things, pain starts looking differently than those who can become addicted to, which is a term I take uh exception with for a lot of reasons.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: Again, another show, but I use it too because that's what people understand it as.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody pulls out a needle and puts it in their arm, and some people uh, you know, open another apartment complex, and some people make more money, and some people get another degree, and some people have another child, and some people move again.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: We all change how we feel by using something that our immediate circumstance gives us access to, have more of.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, absolutely sadly that simple.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: A very, very complex thing is that we all need connection, we all suffer one way or another, and and we are spending our lives running towards what we perceive will bring us joy or away from that which we understand has brought us pain.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we collide, we collide during that thing, and and and if we can identify enough with the ways that we have carelessly run from pain uh or suffering, then we can start to give others the grace to be where they are in their own journey.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think that when we judge, we we decide that what I'm seeing right now is the whole of this individual, and we put a pin in them, and suddenly we have moral ground to say, pull it together, man.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you wouldn't be there if you hadn't done this.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you wouldn't feel that way if you hadn't done that, right?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Make better decisions, we say.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know the journey of how somebody got to the moment we're witnessing them in.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Jen, my first video was exactly that.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, um, and I'll send it to you.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was of a man who had an alcohol problem.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: He was in an ambulance, and the tech is just talking to him, and the tech literally is just asking questions to keep him alive.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Oh, why do you do that?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's bad for your liver.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I don't know.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then in that conversation, he said, Today's my daughter's birthday.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, I'm even tearing up thinking about it because he was like saying, Today's my daughter's birthday.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: She died um at Hurricane Katrina, 12 years old.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he just in his memory, and totally just drunk, but his memory was super intact.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he was talking about her, and I was like crying the entire time, like uh like pouring crying.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he he he figured out at that point, without even knowing, that the reason why he was consuming so much alcohol on that day, almost to the detriment of his liver, he was about to die, was the fact that he was mourning the death of his 12-year-old child.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that was it.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: That was the moment when I was like, I judge this guy, and the tech judged this guy, and we could easily say, stop drinking, right?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Get it together, get your life together, put it down.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: But this guy was suffering.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: He was trying to die because his daughter died.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, that's what we don't know.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know that that man shooting up in the street is going through the same experience.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, the hypocrisy, I have friends who are like wealthy who fucking do, um my language hurrying, who do cocaine every fucking freaking night.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, how different is that than shooting up in the streets?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: You shooting up in your nose.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's the resource thing.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's the resource thing I'm talking about.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same thing.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, oftentimes that becomes correlated with race and lack, uh, you know, and I mean, that's another show.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, I can see having you and I do like once a month episode because I think we can have some really fantastic conversations about this.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot to unpack.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think we like we put out to each other like topics ad nauseum.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's so many.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh my God, there's 400 topics that she just put out.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's what I mean.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, and I think sometimes um we're not gonna have those conversations with everybody on the planet, but if people can sort of sit in their room and listen to them, then that's part of uh that's part of us helping others grow.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: Not um, and and I and I grow talking to you, I don't mean like I've got all this wisdom to impart.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: I just mean that if we can hear somebody else's experience from a distance and we don't have to be witnessed experiencing it, it can feel safer to truly listen, right?
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so yeah, so I want to jump back again to something really quickly.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: You talked about uh working with a Mother Teresa charity and helping the poor in Calcutta.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, thank you.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Happy, and it's a documentary about uh the principle of happiness.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: And they talk about how we live with this hedonic treadmill that we uh hedonism just being, I think a layman's definition, just you know, we we we we we get more we get things and that you know gives us that burst of dopamine, so we're happy for a minute, but then it wears off, and then we want to get the next thing, right?
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we're on this hedonic treadmill, and um and we're not happy.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: We're not consistent, we don't have joy, not the internal soul at rest peace that we're really seeking, right?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: When we're trying to consume all the time.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um but then they go to this man who lived in a world that he made six figures and then some, and he was miserable, and he went to Calcutta and he worked with the poverty stricken, diseased that were untouchables, and he brought them water.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: They were he would help them sit up in their bed, these dying men, and he would bring them a cup of water.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, likely he was in a place called uh um Nirmal Hide in Calcutta.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: That was the place that I was at.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's a house for the dying.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's exactly where he was.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: And he said nothing has changed his life, quite like realizing the value of a glass of water to a dying man.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: He said it changes all of the stuff you see in the world.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, see the film.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: I encourage everybody on this call to I'll I'll try to remember to put it in the show notes.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let me turn the table on you then, Jen.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, on that question.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you want to end with this, but what makes you happy?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: This hearing other people's stories, sharing what I've learned in my life, sharing my experience, um, pouring into people that don't see themselves as valuable.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, getting up in the morning and celebrating the fact that I can take a walk with my body and in the area that I live in, that I'm safe to do that.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I try to really celebrate the small stuff, man.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's I and you know, I I like because you're married, Jen, you better add the wife in there.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: She knows.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: She knows, but you're right.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'll have to edit that, put that at the front of my list.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my relationship with God.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: My relationship with God, and that has gone through its own journey.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I've only just begun to actually consider calling myself a Christian because it has been such an ugly experience for me of what that looks like.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but then with all of the conversation about Dolly Parton, I'm like, people are like, are you a Dolly Parton Christian?
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no, I could get with that.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyhow, um, lots of things make me happy, man.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of things hurt.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes the very things that make me happy hurt my heart.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: But being able to live in that duality, as you said, um, is a challenging place to live, but I wouldn't want to be any other way.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: When I was afraid to process and experience my pain, I was drunk.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I thank God for alcohol because as bad as it got with my drinking, it saved my life.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: If I hadn't had that life raft to float through that period of time where I was in so much pain, I couldn't breathe, and I had so few skills uh to deal with how I was experiencing my life, um, I wouldn't be here today.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm also grateful that I was able to put it down and become the woman that I was, I believe I'm meant to be.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm with you on the duality.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: Again, we don't know happiness until we know sadness.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the human experience.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to know suffering in order to know joy.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's unfortunately our lot in life.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't face the other, there is no celebrating the joy and happiness, right?
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, right?
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: We call that sharing tea with each other.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we share some tea, you know.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, mine too.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean, sharing tea?
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me more.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, you know, I learned it from Drag, you know, it's sharing tea.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is it the tea or the truth, or like, you know, calling each other out or expressing the very real depth, you know, yeah, you know, tea?
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's the tea.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I love sharing tea.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: So listen, after all the videos that you've watched and all the people that you've cried with without ever meeting them, what does doing that leave you with?
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do you have that you would say through your training in religion and your training in humanity and being a uh you said that you're, did you say you're an immigrant?
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: Being a Philippines, yeah.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: And identifying as a gay man, like all of those things, what has this taught you about how how to be?
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: Great question, Jen.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's taught me to see myself.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: So in seeing other people's suffering and seeing their pain, I get to see my own self.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a mirror.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: And once I've seen and my truest self, truly, not in the imaginative, I want to be real, I'm seeing myself through others because what I see in others is who I am.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: We all share in the same suffering.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: We all share in the same darkness, we all share in the same joy and happiness.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can see the person across from us as ourselves, that is the ultimate form of Christian charity, of Christian love.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: That I see me in you, you in me, thus I can be with you and help you, you help me, and we can be humans together.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: As imperfect and messy as we are.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna say this, I'm sorry about my language, but I am a messy bitch.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: I see that in myself, and when I see that in others, I'm like, oh, you're a messy bitch too.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't we clean it up a little bit and do it together?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just me.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm seeing me now because I can cry um in this pain that you're going through.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: I now can cry with my own pain.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, see, that's so beautiful, man.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I agree.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that is the ultimate.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, I really think that that's the beauty of it, right?
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think I I often say that I think human beings were born wherever they were born with a sort of figurative wicker basket full of things that they will go through.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: And we all share the same: anger, jealousy, sadness, attachment, lack of attachment, fear, uh, compassion, and like all of this stuff.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: And what determines how we experience it is the environment that we were born into.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: And what I think is the biggest division among us is not recognizing each other through what taught us the same things.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because where I learned about love is going to look very different than where you learned about love.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: What I was afraid of was very different than maybe what you had in your world to fear.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: And and and I truly believe that if we could, as you said, see ourselves in each other and recognize that uh we know each other, man.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: We know each other.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Mother Teresa herself said if there is no peace, it's because we forgot that we belong to each other.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how profound is that, right?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: And um and I and I love that.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I truly think that um if we can do more of that, then we can just let folks be and breathe.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's gotta be a different world we live in.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: What beautiful uh end to this, because Jen, this is what I want to end with with my experience with Mother Teresa, who saw Jesus Christ and the poorest of the poor.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: I have a different version of it, and that is in seeing myself through others, I see God.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: And not so much because I just see God through them, but my experience with other people helps me to see who God is.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: So now we have this circular pattern of recognition.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: I see me, I see you, I see God.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's why in India we say namaste.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Namaste means I recognize the deity in you.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: So seeing that compassion and that empathy ultimately will bring you to an enlightened state of seeing God, whoever created you.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have that full circle belief in life and death and all things good as a human being.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and there's there's peace in that.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Jason.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: You have a great day.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: If this conversation sparked something for you, or if you want to dive deeper, head over to soulnotskin.com and take a look around.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Grab a copy of the book, Soul Knot Skin, free resources, or get on the wait list for our next workshop.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you'll pull up a chair next time to hang out with us again.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: We're figuring out this world and ourselves at the same exact time, growing as we listen to the stories of others.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: Let's keep getting to know each other.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: After all, we are in this together.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: See you next time.